Design Thinking at Work Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

Design thinking means utilizing experimentation, feedback, and multiple iterations of prototypes to come up with creative solutions to problems that others might not have identified. Design thinking can be a great advantage to firms, but designers need strong leadership support, a separate space to share ideas, and creative freedom to be successful. They should be given the freedom to experiment but should maintain a connection with the rest of the firm. Leaders should help manage their teams by helping them balance incremental and disruptive changes, instill the importance of considering multiple perspectives, and promote their successes throughout the rest of the firm, including to the executive team.

About the Author

David Dunne is a writer, educator, and professor, and Director of MBA Programs at the University of Victoria's Gustavson School of Business. Previously, he worked in product innovation and marketing with Unilever. He was the recipient of the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, and the University of Toronto’s President's Teaching Award.

Topics

Management & Leadership

Design Thinking at Work Book Summary Preview

What You’ll Learn

The key strategies for implementing a design mindset in an organization
The three main tensions that organizations face when design thinking is implemented
Why considering multiple perspectives is essential for creating successful solutions

Who Is This For

Leaders who want to implement design thinking in their organizations
Designers who aim to achieve a balance between their processes and their firms
Business executives who are looking to cultivate a design mindset within their teams

Key Insights

Design thinking involves identifying problems that other people do not see and then utilizing multiple iterations of experimentation, prototyping, and reflection to come up with successful solutions for these problems. Organizations can greatly benefit from design thinking, but design teams need support from leadership if they are to be successful. Because design thinking requires time for experimentation, leaders should give their design teams the necessary freedom and space to come up with creative innovations. However, design teams should not be isolated, or they risk becoming detached from the firm’s needs.

To best support their design team, leaders should help them find a balance between focusing on small, incremental improvements and big, disruptive innovations. Leaders should also encourage their designers to consider multiple perspectives when they come up with solutions while celebrating their quick wins and promoting their successes throughout the firm. With a supportive design leader, collaboration and creativity can flourish in every area of the firm.

Design Thinking Requires Creative Experimentation

Successful design thinking is not easy. It involves using creativity and systems thinking to identify problems, and experimenting to find practical solutions that will increase business value. Design thinking is iterative, which means that continuous reflection and feedback is necessary in order to generate creative solutions. Therefore, it requires a long-term commitment from an organization and its leaders to be successful.

For example, the inventor Gerwin Hoogendoorn reinvented the umbrella by taking the old design apart, tinkering with it, and reconstructing several different prototypes before coming up with his final model. He tested his prototypes under many different scenarios and had multiple people try his models and received feedback from them. He then utilized this feedback to continually revamp his design and created multiple iterations before he finally created a marketable product.

While Hoogendoorn went directly into the experimentation phase of his design, most designers begin the process by talking with users and consumers and identifying problems with the product. While consumers might not immediately recognize the problems, it is the designer’s job to recognize and fix problems that other people might miss.

For example, when the multinational consumer goods company Procter & Gamble was developing its line of Swiffer products, they sent designers into people’s homes to observe them cleaning their floors. The designers asked each potential consumer questions about the floor cleaning process, finding out what they hated about the chore, and understanding what could make it better. They discovered many people hated the time and messiness of a traditional mop, so, with this information, they were able to design a new product that eliminated these problems. This type of problem-solving is called...